


Freedom of Choice

by RocketRabbits



Category: Square Pegs (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College, Chapter Lengths Vary, Friends to Lovers, Liberties with Canon, M/M, POV johnny slash, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Slow-ish burn, Tags to be added, alternate universe - late 80s, alternate universe - record shops, alternature universe - johnny and marshall aren't friends, elaborates on canon details, johnny slash is gay, lots of headcanons, lots of ocs- not necessarily important, marshall blechtmann is bisexual, third person present tense, this got out of my hands
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-09-02 17:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16791526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RocketRabbits/pseuds/RocketRabbits
Summary: Johnny Slash had always wanted something distinctly his - music, a name, an identity. When he moves to the City to escape his small town childhood, he finds there might have been things he always overlooked.





	1. A Brief History of Johnny Ulasewicz

**Author's Note:**

> If you're reading this, you're familiar with (Or interested in?) a charmingly kitsch 1982 sitcom by the name of Square Pegs. I'm excited for you!!! It's a lovely show that's held my interest for years, despite its criminally underrated status. 
> 
> I don't know how long this fic is going to be, and I don't know how consistently it'll update, but right now I'm in the middle of intense rewrites of chapters 1-15, at the very least. Hang tight! It's gonna get '80s.
> 
> IN THIS CHAPTER: Meet your POV character!

He was born Johnathan Ulasewicz, a second-generation immigrant’s son raised in small-town Connecticut. By the time he could speak, he asked to be called Johnny, so that’s what he became. At the precious age of three, Johnny Ulasewicz took a shaky, unconscious step into his future.

Nobody really called him anything, growing up. He made a point not to interact with kids his age because his tongue was always too heavy and his words scrambled. His thoughts never came out the way he wanted them to, and by the time he realized it everyone else had always moved on without him, leaving him babbling to nothing.  


He found music young. He liked the things his parents played, like Chuck Berry, Elvis, the Chords. Doo-woppy things far older than he was with sound enough to focus on that was still soft enough to sleep to. His parents died, lost in a car wreck, and the music they left helped quiet the silence of his grandfather’s house, but the crooning voices made his heart ache. He switched the Beatles and fell in love with Paul.

He realized in middle school that his classmates had _Playboy_ stashed in their backpacks when he was trading Paul McCartney for Joe Strummer. Punk was fast, loud, and anonymous, so much so that local bars barely checked IDs, he’d heard, and saw the sweaty drunks brawling on the streets when he visited the city. The women looked like men and the men looked like gods with their misshapen faces and skin as blue and green as their hair.

That, the way he thought of the punks, was called _queer_. He learned the word whispered by his classmates his second freshman year. It was always whispered if anyone said it at all. They said it about Spacek, and they said it about the girls Johnny kind of wanted to be friends with, the ones with the braces and the glasses that didn’t want anything to do with him, and he liked all of them fine. He decided it wasn’t anything to talk about, not that he talked anyway, but he didn’t think about it either, just kept to himself and played _Freedom of Choice_ as loud as he could on his way to the city.

He got out of high school fine, eventually; stamped across a stage after only five years in robes that flashed his ankles and the bright pink jeans beneath, the tips of his hair the same deep purple as the school-assigned robes, and they didn't make him take off his sunglasses, but they did cough when he tried to wear his headphones during the speeches. It was a good end, he guessed, but with no graduation party, no reason to stay, and no chance of college, his kissed his grandmother on the cheek, held his grandfather's steady hand, and piled a couple suitcases and a box of records into the back of his van, suddenly much too tall for the place he'd grown up, and took a more final drive to the edges of Weemawee proper and beyond.


	2. The Birth of Slash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny meets Ed and his charming employee/transient ne'er do well. They talk punk.
> 
> INTRODUCING: The Clash Roadie from episode 1
> 
> Ed is kind of a bastard?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did a lot of math to figure out a real timeline for johnny's childhood but im bad at math so just roll with it, thanks

Johnny put his application in at every record store in the city, saving his pennies from the grocery store to move into an apartment with any stranger that scared him the least. One shop called back.

Ed Howards leans across the flimsy plastic table in the break room to hold Johnny’s hand in what’s maybe the most uncomfortable way possible: limp, sweaty, clearly trying to be a handshake. Ed himself is fat and gigantic, a hairy man a few inches taller than Johnny’s 6’1 with a voice a hundred times louder.

“Jonathan,” Ed barks. “I’ve seen you, yeah?”

  
“I’m here most weekends.”

“Of course, our late night club boy. You lookin’ for a job?”

  
  
“I just moved from Weemawee. I was a bagboy.”

  
  
“What does a bagboy know about music?”

  
Every song Johnny has ever loved plays in his head at once, a ringing chorus that sounds, honestly, kind of awful. “I’m in a band.”

  
  
“A band, huh? What’s your head, kid?”

  
  
“Used to be punk. I’m new wave now.”

  
  
Ed nods slowly. Johnny can’t tell if it’s good or bad or if Ed is falling asleep. “What’s your last name, kid?”

  
  
“It’s on the application,” Johnny tries, but Ed just holds his gaze. “It’s Ulasewciz.”

  
  
“I can’t spell that Polack shit. You can work here if you pick something else. Something American.”

  
  
Johnny’s heart aches just a bit for the name his father died with, but it jumps just a bit more for something fully his own. “It’s, uh, Slash. Johnny Slash.” It was a name he’d dreamed of calling himself, back when he did fawn over the punks in the city, if he’d ever had the nerve to talk to them. In hindsight he’d only seen them with his grandparents, and he’d been far too young for any of them, but in his daydreams, that’s what he’d been called. He never said it out loud.

  
  
Ed shrugs with his eyes and scribbles the name on a strip of masking tape. “C’mon, get out of here. Go meet your coworker.”

  
  
Johnny half expects to be thrown out of the break room on his ass, but to his credit Ed goes through the motions of actually showing him to the door, even though the store itself is small enough that Johnny could definitely have figured out where to go on his own. He decides the best place to start is the brunette bespectacled girl at the counter chatting with a customer. Johnny likes her before she even speaks to him, and she kind of reminds him of someone he’d seen around his high school.

“You must be new,” she says, and he nods, relieved not to speak. “I’m Melanie. You’re,” she squints at the scribbled masking tape on his chest. “Johnny Slash. That’s the best nametag you’ll ever get, Johnny Slash. Welcome to Ed’s.”

  
  
“Is he-“

  
  
“A useless alcoholic? Yes. Have you worked in a record store before? There’s not really much to show you around to, but I can if you’d like.”

  
  
The man also standing at the counter scoffs. “Shut up, Melanie. Let me show him around.” The man kind of smirks in Johnny’s direction, and closer he looks maybe ten years Johnny’s senior. “Mark Quincy. Follow me.”

  
  
“Do you work here, too?”

  
  
“Ed wishes.”

  
  
“No he doesn’t,” Melanie says, leaning over the counter but making no effort to stop Mark from taking the lead, “He tried and never showed up.”

  
  
“Don’t be a sellout, I might as well run this place.” Melanie rolls her eyes and turns to something behind the counter, effectively shutting Mark down. Nobody actually seems mad, so Johnny’s not sure if they always argue. Ed’s isn’t big, and he’s sure he doesn’t need a tour, but he’s content to be lead through the aisles not any different from a Towers. Mark leads him through, naming every shelf and bin.

“I used to be a Clash roadie,” he says when they stumble on a _Combat Rock_ album. Mark takes it up gingerly. “Saw every show they played in the US. What were you doing at the end of the ‘70s, Johnny Slash?”

  
  
Jerking it to posters of Joe Strummer. Pretending he didn’t dream about Sid Vicious. “I Liked the Clash. I was in middle school.”

  
  
Mark glances from _Combat Rock_ to Johnny. “Yeah? You still in that scene?”

  
  
“No way,” Johnny says, firm and fast, “I’m new wave.”

  
  
Mark kind of smirks. People always kind of smirk. They’re different genres completely. Why does everyone smirk? “Oh, yeah? What’d you think of _Midnight to Midnight?”_

“It was okay.”

  
  
“So,” Mark says, starting to move on, and he’s still looking at Johnny in a kind of weird way he’s familiar with and somehow still confused by. “Where was middle school Johnny missing the whole punk scene?”

  
  
“Weemawee,” Johnny says, “It’s kinda small, I guess. I just moved.”

  
  
Mark whistles. “Welcome to the city, kid. It’s as shitty as the ‘burbs with better music. Let me be your guide?”

  
  
“Actually I usually came to the city on the weekends, I know my way around. The clubs had better music, you know? More my head.”

  
  
Mark nods, kind of the way Ed did, except Johnny’s sure he isn’t about to fall asleep. Mark pulls a receipt from his pocket. “Got a pen?” Johnny shakes his head and Mark calls to Melanie, who tosses it directly at his head and nearly misses. Mark scribbles something on the receipt and hands it to Johnny. It’s a phone number. “Might not answer,” He says, “Might be turned off, but have it, kid. Let me know if you ever want to know about the golden days.”

“I’m new wave now,” Johnny says again, somewhat disdainfully.

  
  
“Alright, alright. Still. See you around, kid.” Mark slams one heavy fist against the breakroom door and waves at Melanie before trudging out the door. Johnny watches him leave and looks at Melanie.

  
  
“Is he always so-“

  
“Awful and smug? Unfortunately. He smokes in here, too. Did he even show you around?”

  
  
Ed smokes in here, Johnny wants to say, but doesn't. “Kind of?”

  
  
Melanie heaves a long suffering sigh. Johnny almost backs into the aisle. “Asshole. Alright, I’ll catch you up. Let start with register.”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So these are the OCs we're with, basically. after this nearly every introduced character is canon.


	3. Meeting Marshall Blechtman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here comes a special boy! Here comes a special boy! here comes a special boy!
> 
> I don't actually know how popular The Fish People Tapes was, but I love it dearly, and it seems like the kind of thing Johnny would just/know/ about.
> 
> Take a break to listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu3fDouzTpk&list=PLB33F57A8261E379A

Mark doesn’t come back to the store and Johnny doesn’t call. In fact, he goes two weeks without even thinking about the receipt in his pocket, and when he does it isn’t Mark that reminds him.

Johnny’s pretty sure Ed only employs himself and Melanie. Either that, or the other coworkers are excellent hiders, and Melanie just doesn’t like to talk about them. He takes over for the afternoon, most days, and Melanie looks constantly relieved to see him, almost as if she never really expects him to come back. Melanie doesn’t know much about music, only the top 40s and only kind of, but that’s fine with Johnny. Those aren’t bad, just not what he knows. He isn’t sure how someone with so little interest got a job with Ed. Maybe the interview process was different.

“Slow day, Slash,” She says. Of course it is. It’s Wednesday morning.

“Good,” he says instead of that, “I’m too tired.”

  
  
“Ain’t we all, baby, I’ll see you tomorrow!” Melanie’s lovely, even if she is so different from him. He kind of wonders if he can ask her to see a movie without it sounding like flirting.

  
The afternoon passes quietly and slowly, and Ed isn’t there, so he pops on his headphones and hopes nobody catches him listening to tapes.

  
  
“Hey,” someone says only about half an hour later, “hey, counter boy.”

  
  
Johnny pulls one earphone off. “Hi.”

  
  
“Hey, yeah, you sell comedy albums?”

  
  
“Uh,” Johnny answers, “A bin, totally. Not a whole lot.”

  
  
“You got Alexei Sayle?” The customer seems rushed, still out of breath like he actually ran here. Johnny can’t imagine needing a comedy album that badly.

  
  
“Maybe. Here, let me show you.” Johnny slides out from behind the counter and leads the stranger down the aisles to a truly pitiful bin beneath a far window. “It’d be here.”

The stranger digs through with a lazer focus Johnny reserved for new DEVO albums. “Murphy,” the stranger grumbles, “Cosby, God dammit!”

  
  
“What were you looking for?”

  
  
“Alexei Sayle! _The Fish People Tapes_.”

  
  
Johnny brightens. He doesn’t generally know comedy, but he does like _The Fish People Tapes_. “Oh, totally. That’s a few years out.”

  
  
“I know,” the customer snaps, clutching a Cheech and Chong album, “I’m using it for impersonations.”

  
  
“I can try to order it? I heard it in a store a while ago, it was pretty funny.”

  
  
“You do orders here?” The customer seems hopeful, or at least positive, for the first time since he walked in. His eyes are pretty cute.

  
  
“No,” Johnny says, “But you sound like you need it, and I wouldn’t know where else to find it.”

  
  
“That’d be awesome!”

  
“I can try. Come back in a few weeks?”

  
  
“Can’t you just call me if it comes in?”

  
  
“Oh,” Johnny answers, “Right. Hold on. Let me get your info.” He strides back to the counter significantly quicker than the customer can, and by the time he catches up, Johnny’s picked a clean piece of paper out of a tiny scrap bin. “What’s your name and number?”

  
  
“Marshall Blechtman,” The customer answers, and then spells, and then goes over his phone number twice.  


“This would be a huge favor, counter man,” Marshall says.

  
  
“It’s Johnny. Johnny Slash. I’ll see what I can do, totally.”

  
  
“Okay,” Marshall whispers, then louder, “Okay. I’ll take it. See ya, Johnny.” Just like Mark, he flies out the door faster than Johnny can register.

  
  
“Uh, thanks for coming in,” He says to nothing.


	4. The Seduction of Mark Quincy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny and Mark go to Burger King. Mark's really sleazy, actually.

As it happens, Mark does come back. Johnny hadn’t thought of him after Marshall left, but a few days after he stomps in just as Melanie clocks in. “Slash,” He yells, and the few other customers look up in brief flashes of alarm. “You never called!”  
  
“Stop harassing our new boy, we got customers in here,” Melanie scolds.

“Whatever, Mel, he’s been here a month. New my ass.”  
  
“I wanna keep him, thanks. You know how nice it is not to close weekends?”  
  
”Slash! You took _weekends_?”  
  
“Be quiet, Mark.”  
  
Johnny shrugs, only half-listening to their bickering through his headphones. “Record stores at night are totally cool. I like weekends.”

“Ed should close earlier,” Mark grumbles, pulling out a cigarette. “He could fix the lights with that extra pay.”  
  
Johnny shrugs again and turns to help a customer. He thinks it’s someone he went to high school with, but he doesn’t really remember anyone clearly. Maybe a popular girl’s boyfriend?

Melanie makes some kind of scoffing noise. “Slash, anyway,” Mark says, completely ignoring both her and the customer, “Wanna catch a bite?”  
  
“Thanks for coming,” Johnny says to the customer. Then, to Mark, “When?”  
  
“Was thinking now, really.”  
  
“He usually works afternoons,” Melanie said. “What would you have done if that was today?”  
  
“Come back later?” Mark answers, but he doesn’t look away from Johnny. “So?”  
  
“Where would we go? I eat junk food,” He says.  
  
“Everyone eats junk food.”  
  
“I eat junk food,” he repeats.  
  
“Alright, then let’s go to Burger King. Just to catch up.”  
  
“You must really like small talk.”  
  
“What can I say? I like you, kid. Let’s head out.”  
  
“Mark never invites me out,” Melanie says, and it doesn’t sound like she’d want to if he did.  
  
“You’re at work, doll.”

“Excuses. Have fun, boys.”

Johnny decides not to tell Mark he’s got a van, unsure if there’s enough parking a block or two away to be worth it. It’s a decent enough day to walk, anyway. He likes the sound Mark’s boots make on the pavement, a sharp contrast to his own plain sneakers. He wonders if he still has boots that heavy somewhere in the van.  
  
Mark walks weirdly close, something Johnny only notices because he isn’t used to walking with anyone, not really, but he walks as close as girls in high school did, so maybe it’s just a friendly thing. Johnny doubts it.  
  
Mark only orders a large Coke when they get there, but Johnny never turns down a burger and fries.  
  
“You eat like it’s outta style, kid,” Mark says, running the straw of his drink through the hole a few quick times.   
  
“I told you,”  
  
“You like junk food, I know. I gotta confess, kid, I heard you were in a band, I wanted to talk about that.”  
  
“There was this burger place in Weemawee,” Johnny says instead, eyeing the Burger King décor behind his shades, “That only high schoolers ever ate at. Really good burgers! I was only ever really there to people watch? There were these two girls that were always there. They were always everywhere, actually. I think I had them in every class. They were always up to something. I don’t like confrontation, no way, but it would have been cool to know what they were up to.”  
  
“Johnny, I asked about your band.”  
  
“Oh,” Johnny says, and turns his head back to Mark. “Right.”  
  
Mark chuckles, kind of, and it sounds weird, like guys like Mark are only meant to sneer. He’ll take the chuckles, though. Chuckling’s good. “I wanna talk about your band, kid. Get to know you better.” He inches his hand ever so slightly closer to Johnny.

Johnny knows people think he’s an airhead. They’re right, he doesn’t pay attention to school or the general goings on of anything. He doesn’t see the point, really, when the things nobody else pays attention to are more his head. Still, he knows when he’s being flirted with. He glances around to the exactly zero people looking, and leaves his hand where it is, close enough that he can almost feel Mark’s fingertips, too. Truth be told, he’d never been flirted with outside of a club. It’s harder in the sunlight.  
  
“We’re Open 48 Hours.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“My band, Open 48 Hours. I saw the neon sign in a drugstore window and it spoke to me, y’know?”  
  
“There’s a drugstore where you’re from that’s open for two days straight, then closes?”  
  
“Oh. We used to be Open 24 Hours.”  
  
Mark blinks. “Johnny, are you some kind of hippie? Are you high?”  
  
Johnny chokes on a french fry. “No! Drugs aren’t my head.”  
  
Mark nods, more to himself, Johnny thinks, than to show he understands. “Okay. Alright, tell me about Open 48 Hours.”

So Johnny does, he talks about their first concert at the grocery store Johnny bagged at, and about the first and last gig at Muffy Tepperman’s Bat Mitzvah, something he only managed to play by accident, some girls that had seen his concert at the grocery store argued for him to play then. The same girls, he thinks, that he always saw everywhere. Maybe he should know their names. “Um, we opened for DEVO,” he finishes.  
  
“For _DEVO?”_ Mark says it wrong, he emphasizes the DE- instead of the -VO. “At a Bat Mitzvah?”  
  
“She was rich,” Johnny shrugs. “I think she got our school an orphan? I had to drum off demerits for the kid once.”  


“Your band looking for gigs?”  
  
“Maybe? I’ve been busy, I just moved out of Weemawee.”  
  
“Let me know if you do. I know places that love young locals.”  
  
Mark’s attractive, Johnny guesses. He’s kind of rough, looks tired in ways Johnny feels tired, and he likes him enough. Johnny shoves a fry into his mouth. “What about you?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“How do you feel about young locals?”  
  
Mark grins. “Let’s get out of here.”


	5. The Fish People Tapes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marshall's back to stay this time.

Mark’s apartment is tiny and disgusting, but it’s entirely his own, something Johnny can’t afford, and therefore envies. The roommates he did find, two young women who were almost never home, didn’t ask when he spent more and more nights with Mark. He starts calling it a friend’s place anyway, just in case, and it’s nice to have somewhere to be that isn’t work. Mark talks, and he seems okay that Johnny doesn’t, and at his clubs he can focus entirely on the music. It’s Johnny’s ideal.  
They get the records in at Ed’s, the records Johnny’d pleaded for out of pity for that poor kid. Of course instead of pleading he asked Melanie, who placed the order and rolled her eyes when Ed demanded answers, but the fact remains that on a Monday just over two weeks after Marshall first came in. Johnny digs through the scrap bin for the information, and nervously dials the number. A voice that doesn’t sound like Marshall says sure, he’ll tell him, and on Thursday Marshall barrels in.

“Are you the only one working here?” he asks without greeting. “I have never seen someone else.”

“Well,” Johnny says, “There is Melanie.”

“Oh, she hot?”  
Johnny shrugs. Maybe. “Album’s in the comedy bin.”

“You didn’t even hold it?”

Johnny shrugs again, as if to say don’t shoot, I’m just the cashier. “Sorry.”

Marshall rolls his eyes but bounds back anyway. He’s always in a rush. Johnny kind of notices him grab an album off the top of the bin, turn around, and grin at the thing. He might kiss it. Johnny’s not watching Marshall as much as he is zoning out in that general direction. He can see the green cover, though.

“You’re a lifesaver, guy,” Marshal says, setting it on the counter and digging around in his pocket. “I need this for a show, I’m gonna be a star.” 

“Show?”

Marshall grins, clearly thrilled someone asked. His teeth are cute. “A comedy gig, I specialize in impersonation. Owner of the comedy club’s this Brit that fucking loves Sayle. Quotes this album all the time. I’m gonna make it a one-man show.” He clears his throat and speaks again, this time in an exaggerated English accent. “Alexei, I need a comedy album here, can we have more jokes and less Pathos?”

“Wow,” Johnny says. The accent was terrible. “I just really liked the song bits that cut the episodes.”

“Oh, sure. Pretty electronic.”

“Very new wave.”

Marshall ignores him. “I just need to transcribe it. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck. 9.98 please.”

‘Hey,” Marshall says, forking over the cash, “You should come. To the show, I mean. Or just the club in general.”

Johnny isn’t sure he’s a fan of organized comedy. He’d never paid any attention. “Sure, could be my head. Have a flyer?”

Marshall grins again. His smile in general is pretty cute. “Always do,” he says, and he pulls a folded red piece of paper out of his wallet. “What’s your name again?”

“Johnny Ulasewicz.” 

“What?”

“Johnny Slash.”

“Yeah? Rock and roll. See you later, Slash.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am really really excited to finally be posting this after a whole ass year and completely abandoning my other canon-compliant Square Pegs fic LMAO.,,,,
> 
> NEXT TIME: Welcome to Ed's Records


End file.
